Routine can be a good thing. It can help you build strong habits: get you exercising more, get you to work on time, get you writing regularly.
Building a routine can make life easier because it removes the pressure of making endless decisions. If you always eat the same thing for tea on Tuesday nights, you don’t need to worry about what to cook.
But it’s important to know when a routine isn’t working for you.
I’ve always found Sundays a bit stressful. There’s a reason they call it the Sunday blues. The weekend flies by in a haze and there’s a busy week ahead.
Recently my Sunday anxiety has intensified, even if I’m not particularly worried about Monday.
If I stop and look at my Sunday, it isn’t particularly helpful for reducing stress levels.
I start the day with a long sleep in and a lazy breakfast. So far so good.
Then we take the dog for a walk. Excellent.
After that I come home and fit in a workout and any remaining housework. My energy levels are flagging.
I manage to shower and squeeze in an hour or so of chill time, snacking on the sofa watching TV. Lovely.
But the clock is ticking on towards Sunday night and there’s one big thing I haven’t started: book promotion, blogging and all that jazz.
Usually I have a list of stuff I want to get done on Sunday. Maybe write and schedule a couple of blog posts, fire off some emails, enter a competition and do a bit of social media. I’m not the fastest worker, so these tasks can stretch out over a few hours.
Before I know it, it’s 9pm and I’m stressing about fitting everything in. Eventually I stop, but I feel bad about the tasks I didn’t manage to complete.
I go to bed tired and anxious. So when I wake up on Monday, that feeling persists.
It doesn’t matter how many times I do this to myself, I still maintain that routine, even though it does me no good.
What I should do is work earlier in the day, or get those tasks out of the way on Friday night, so Sunday is for relaxing.
That routine isn’t working for me and I need a better one.
It’s time for a change. Who’s with me?
Mariion2404 says
Same thing here. Chilling too much on sunday and forgetting my tasks…
I just wanted to tell you that I discover your blog a few days ago and I really like it 🙂
Amy Lord says
Thanks for reading Mariion, glad you like the blog!